I don't understand why people rant so much about censorship in cyberspace, given the ease of buying a new tentacle. a long time ago getting a new internet account was a big deal, but now they are as prolific as flies. you can now buy them for $7/mo from Community Connections, courtesy of another cypherpunk (Sameer Parekh) on this list. you even get a 5mb web site at this price, as I understand it. I'd be interested in hearing of any other "tentacle havens" out there if anyone has any comment. <g> my main point is that it's merely a semantic concept to say that someone is "censored" from a mailing list. it's not really possible to do such a thing anymore given how easy it is to get new internet account with no ID necessary. you can fight it or you can surf on it!! it's quite ironic that to have the ability for a moderator to have a "civilized" forum with a guaranteed ability to obstruct certain individuals, would require what cpunks would consider an orwellian identification system. (tying a human to their cyberspace posts. it could be done.) p.s. one of these days I wonder if someone is going to mount a really concerted attack against a mailing list using a full tentacle arsenal instead of only a single email address or anonymous remailers, just for the kicks of it. the "automatic prose generator" technology out there leaves a lot of other interesting ideas. an ingenious software engineer with a flair for writing could create some pretty sophisticated grammars that automatically generate text yet are impossible to detect over perhaps even dozens of messages output by them. they could even have their own personalities and writing styles, if the software engineer were creative and devious enough. it's just a matter of time, and really every mailing list in the world is defenseless against it. does anyone have a technical solution? you'd solve one of mankinds most pressing and difficult problems ever encountered: "spam". on the other hand, maybe such a thing has already happened and no one knows about it. or maybe its happening right now on this list. it would be absolutely impossible to detect in all the typical noise if the "graffiti artist" were crafty enough. (hee, hee)